That James Damore Guy!

I'm still marveling about the central notion in James Damore's suit against Google. That Google has, as policy, a system of blacklisting, to allow its employees to cut themselves off from employees they don't like. (Is this just in political discussions, or does it extend to business as well?)

But you can understand it, if you listen to YouTube's Susan Wojciki, "part of the team at Google that decided to fire Damore." She talked to her kiddies at dinner. I think that her kids were asking her if it was true that women just don't quite cut it at face-to-the-monitor techie stuff.

I’ve spent so much time, so much of my career, to try to overcome stereotypes, and then here was this letter that was somehow convincing my kids and many other women in the industry, and men in the industry, convincing them that they were less capable. That really upset me.

Don't look now, Susie, but if you say something "upset" you, then you are promoting the stereotype that women act upon their feelings and not upon the facts. You are also promoting the stereotype that all upscale Bay Area notables are empty-headed morons without a idea in their heads except to advance the liberal party line. Oh, and by the way, have you ever investigated the original Greek meaning of "stereotype?" Before liberals got in charge, the Greek word "stereos" meant solid.

Of course, it is not really that scandalous that Google would discriminate against white male conservatives. Corporate types are always rumbling about "corporate culture" in corporate-speak, and I'd say it is only a couple of steps from promoting a corporate culture to rooting out dissenters. The whole point about a corporation is that it is, as its name implies, a body of people in which hierarchy and top-down management rules, and not the prices of the market.

But here is my bigger point. It starts with the notion of German sociologist Georg Simmel a century ago about what would happen when women came out of the home and into the public square.

Obviously, Simmel wrote, the public sphere, the world outside the home, in the short term would still be defined by men for men, but in the long term women would transform the public square to suit "a more feminine sensibility."

I must say that when I wrote this three years ago I was still "questioning" about what women in the public square meant.

It means that corporate culture is moving away from the male notion of the brotherhood, in which the question of feelings are subordinated to the goal of the operation, towards a culture in which feelings and relationships are more valued and enforced. The whole point of military training, for instance, is to train natural fight-or-flight instincts into fight-only instincts. The idea is that the rank-and-file soldier -- and therefore corporate warrior -- should be prepared to risk his life in the service of the brotherhood or corporation, and actually put his life on the line when ordered to. This is male culture. It is not female culture.

Any social unit that is governed not by a male sensibility but by a female sensibility is going to produce a corporate culture very different from the "once more unto the breach" mentality of the warrior band. It is going to produce a corporate culture much closer to the Google model than the model of Henry V's army in front of Harfleur.

There are other differences. I remember a woman friend complaining that the men wouldn't listen to her on a non-profit board she had recently joined. That's another difference between the male sensibility and the female sensibility. Men assume that they get a right to speak only when their deeds show that they are worthy of respect and that they have something to contribute. A woman expects to have the right to "share" from the moment she gets on the board.

Now I am a profound admirer of women. And I firmly believe that the feminine sensibility has its place in human affairs just as the male sensibility has its place.

But here is a heretical notion. Just as the male sensibility of smash through to victory is not the only way to do things and is wildly inappropriate in many cases, so the female sensibility of sharing and of replaying the high-school-mean-girl culture is not the only way to do things, and is wildly inappropriate in many cases.

However, you better not say stuff like that at Google. Because diversity and inclusion and stereotypes.

Hey, how about doing something about the liberal stereotypical behavior of lock-step political loyalty and unfriending anyone that disagrees with you, as this gay guy from a liberal, Jewish family experienced when he started to become conservative? What about diversity, inclusion, and stereotypes?